We examined transitions occurring throughout the school day in an elementary school, sampling from kindergarten, second grade, and fourth grade classrooms. Unobtrusive observations and descriptive notetaking were used to gather data during six typical school days in the second half of the school year. Data were coded by committee to categorize the…

Defending the Early Years released a survey to better understand the impact COVID-19 has had on young children, their families, and their teachers. Schools, centers, and childcare providers were forced to close their doors as the world implemented social distancing measures to slow the spread of the new deadly virus. This survey was written to…

Starting school requires children to manage a wide range of personal, interpersonal and institutional expectations and challenges, yet few child-report measures have captured the diversity of these experiences. In this paper, the Pictorial Measure of School Stress and Wellbeing (PMSSW) interview was used with 101 school entrants at the beginning…

The transition from home to early childhood education can be stressful for both children and parents. How parents cope with this potentially stressful event affects both the children's adaptation and the parents' lives during the preschooler stage of the family lifecycle. This paper examines how parents respond to their children's adjustment…

This study explores (1) how parental and teacher scaffolding and children's coping strategies contribute to children's adjustment during the transition from preschool to school; and (2) how children's perception of stress and coping are constructed over time. The sample included 216 six-year-old children, their parents and teachers. The parents,…

This paper describes the development, administration, and scoring of the Pictorial Measure of School Stress (PMSS). This instrument was designed to describe individual differences in children's feelings about everyday school situations and their coping strategies for dealing with these. The PMSS uses a semi-structured interview to present specific…